PurpleZephyrUnicorn Flounces from the Forum
i been @7 other sites n every1 says my poems
touch there souls n also i won a contest once
and was published in an anthology you might
have heard of—by the National Library of Poetry.
so who r u to hold up ten thousand commandments
to the sky and say i cant write or post my poems
or anything? u dont know what poetry is and also
u cant teach me anything but you said my poems
made you cry and that proves my poems are
affective and touch even your tiny soul. so there.
Martial 6.60
Burn Barrel
The house was cleaned by neighbor girls,
who pulled out the couch as if vacuuming
unused corners of the room could help.
Everyone’s gone home, carrying their empty
lasagna pans, pie tins, Tupperware. We froze
what we could, divided out the rest to aunts
and cousins. I’m here to gather trash,
sort recycling, toss wilted flowers to the cows.
I drag the paper bin across the yard
to the burn barrel—rusted, stained with use—
and return to ask where Grandfather kept
the matches. Grandmother’s in the bedroom,
sorting clothes: some for charity, some so ratty
that she sighs and says I suppose these
must be burned. I box and haul it all, piling
in the yard shirts and pants that smell of him.
The barrel isn’t large enough for this.
Untitled
Fog stalks the treeline across the field,
sniffs at the branches, wraps a long tongue
around the trunks, tastes the sap. It will not
eat us for hours; it will hunt in the distance
while we watch and listen to the bellows
of consumed cattle, the cries of birds
who blundered into its shoulder and disappeared.
We lock the door and wait for it to pad
its way along the red-carpet trail laid down
for approaching winter. We are cold already,
stiffening as the sun drops and we listen
to the muted sounds in the other room:
the even cadence of a Latin prayer, the soft drag
of cotton sheets pulled across a breathless cheek.
Someone hisses. Someone draws in breath
like the raising of a dog’s hackles—a warning
growl that draws our eyes away from the window
to an oak door frame and a brass handle
about to turn. We’ve seen all we need to see:
the fog has swallowed the treeline.
It’s chewing its way across the barren field.
Here Lies Little Boat
Made of “mountain-grown timber” and so forth.
[Insert metaphor here, re: virgin planks
plunging into the bawdy sea.]
Taught me everything I know.
Fastest boat there ever was, everyone
says so. Pretty little thing, anyway.
Retired now. Changing times,
aging lines. Something of that sort.
[Nothing whatsoever to do
with recent purchase of Big Boat.]
Catullus 4
Another Love Poem
She seems a god to us, who stands on hilltops,
string tangled in her fingers, waiting for the wind
to snap the kite out of her hands. Scraps
from her kite making afternoon drift back to us—
snagged on wire, shredded in the bushes.
In the end, she coiled her broken string, walked
away from us. We mark the tracks her feet
left in the dust and try to follow her; her laughter
echoes back to us: I never thought to touch the sky